Indian firms secretly funneled AMD, Nvidia AI GPUs to Russia — sanctions reportedly skirted on hundreds of millions of dollars of hardware

Following sanctions from the United States and its allies over the war against Ukraine, Russia now has to smuggle advanced processors into the country. As discovered by Bloomberg,  an Indian pharmaceutical company, has been involved in exporting Dell servers to Russia, circumventing sanctions imposed by the U.S government.  

Between April and August 2024, Shreya Life Sciences shipped 1,111 units of Dell's PowerEdge XE9680 servers, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, to Russia. These servers are based on Intel's 4th Generation Xeon Scalable CPUs and are equipped with AMD's Instinct MI300X or Nvidia's H100 processors for AI and HPC processors. The shipments, which were legally conducted under India's trade regulations, were sent to two Russian companies, Main Chain Ltd. and I.S LLC. Trade data shows that these exports began in September 2022, following the imposition of sanctions that cut off its access to Western markets. 

The servers trace back to Malaysia, where they were initially sourced by Dell's subsidiary in India before being exported to Russia. Shipping documents for over 800 units of PowerEdge XE9680 servers show Malaysia as the country of origin. Between March and August 2024, India imported 1,407 of these Dell servers from Malaysia. Despite multiple attempts to seek comments from Malaysian officials regarding the exports, neither Malaysia’s Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry nor the Prime Minister’s Office provided a response to Bloomberg. 

Shreya’s exports of Dell servers to Russia surged in April 2024, with an average price of $260,000 per server. These servers are classified under HS code 847150, part of a list of dual-use goods restricted by the EU and U.S. to prevent their use in Russia's military operations. Main Chain, the primary recipient of Shreya's exports, was registered in Russia in January 2023 and is headed by Anastasia Obukhova, who previously ran small tourism companies. 

Shreya Life Sciences, founded in Moscow in 1995 by Sujit Kumar Singh, initially focused on distributing pharmaceutical products but later expanded into manufacturing. In addition to its pharmaceutical exports, which amounted to $22 million between January 2022 and August 2024, Shreya began exporting restricted machines to Russia in September 2022. Its first shipment included computer hardware worth $755,333, sent to Russian trading company Lanprint Ltd., which was later sanctioned by the U.S. in September 2023. After Lanprint and another client, Silkway LLC, were sanctioned, Shreya shifted its exports to Main Chain Ltd. and I.S LLC, neither of which are currently on the U.S. sanctions list. 

Shreya, alongside another Indian company, Hayers Infotech, which operates out of the same office in Mumbai, has reportedly exported $434 million worth of high-tech goods to Russia since February 2022 facilitating the flow of AI and HPC GPUs to Russia, despite international efforts to stop such exports. Such routes has placed India under scrutiny by Western governments and made India the second-largest supplier of restricted technology to Russia, after China. In recent months, U.S. and E.U. officials have traveled to India to persuade the Indian government to cease these exports. However, India's stance remains unchanged, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government continues to prioritize its economic and military ties with Russia, particularly in the context of discounted Russian oil imports.